Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/121

 One morning, when she had put on her white armour against the winter, he goes down for his morning draught, axe in hand. “I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlour of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light, as through a window of ground glass with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

“Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they, were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They